Tornado Warnings - How Do You Prepare?

@LSLGuy beat me to it. Prep once for the season. When the time really matters, minutes may be the difference between living and dying. It is not a bad idea to have something to entertain people in your household. If you are counting on a phone or tablet make sure it actually works in the shelter area. Think about having charging in place, too. If the battery is low when it is time to seek shelter you lose an important communications device not just the ability to read the Dope while sheltering.

A couple other notes:

  • DHS talks about being prepared for at least 72 hours without assistance in the case of emergencies. That is probably a good minimum rules of thumb to prep for.
  • If you use expendable stuff while sheltering make sure to at least check for adequate stocks for the next emergency, if not just replacing everything used each time.

As has been pointed out, that doesn’t always happen and the warning may be minimal even if it happens. It is worth highlighting again since I have seen people talk about using it as a trigger to seek shelter before.

I got to watch a tornado forming not very overhead and reaching towards the ground. It touched down not too far from the little valley I was sheltering in. It was closer to the tops of the ridges around me than the 50-100 feet I was below them. There was no freight train. Admittedly, it was not rushing through trees, houses, etc. to help make noise. Still it was eerily quiet… and pretty cool to watch.

Severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings have been targeted along the path of the storm for about 15 years. They no longer do them for whole counties.

Well that is bad news about the freight train sound not being a good indicator. My only experience I heard it coming and I am very glad it did not end up getting close to me. The damage of even a small one was pretty scary.

I live in the middle a suburban sprawl, I wonder if that makes any difference compared to the lands of open fields?

@What_Exit: I apologize if I mischaracterized your approach. It’s clear you did mean to drop everything and beat feet to safety at the first hint of imminent actual danger.

This has not been my observation in my area. The alert siren has gone off numerous times while I’ve lived in my current home. I’ve never seen the event that precipitated it, and when I check the radar, it’s either downwind or moving away, or upwind on a path that won’t intersect my location.

The warning will be for a box that crosses county lines (example) but it’s up to whoever owns the sirens to decide which ones to turn on.

Sirens are basically a magic talisman to scare away the tornado anyways. AFAIK they’ve never been shown to improve safety.

Right, so if the path intersects a county where no municipalities have siren authority, it’s a county-level decision to sound the sirens, and there’s only specificity if the county has built it into the system.

That’s how it plays out in my experience, and moreover it seems like sometimes my county turns on the woo-woo machine just because neighboring counties are doing it.

@legendhasit,

The storm cellar is a concrete box 7feet deep. and 12ft×12ft.
It’s buried in the ground with a dome looking top with a spinning air vent. It has one steel door that’s very heavy. Metal steps down. Benches on 3 walls. I keep a case of bottled water down there.
I have a bug-out bag at the side door in the house.

The plan is to grab the bag and get in the cellar.
I’ve never successfully done it. Every one gets in, dogs and all, I just can’t do it. I give them the bug out bag and go in the garage and wait to get blown away.

So far I’ve not been blown into Munchkin Land. I’m still in Ar-Kansas, Toto.

heh, me too. I used to be terrified at the thought of a tornado when I was a kid (though they’re not that common in my area) but now I’d probably take at least a quick peek outside. you know, so long as there aren’t any Volvos flying past.

if there actually is one, best I can do is go into the bathroom and duck; I’m in a ground floor condo with no basement. the bathroom is basically the innermost room of the building.

Sounds like you ought to have a talk with your county emergency management authorities to understand what their actual decision process is. Only then will you understand the actual message your local siren is meant to convey.

Give them a call on a sunny day; IME most are real pleased to talk to an interested member of the public.

I think the birds might be able to sense a change in the atmosphere, pressure maybe, and they are sensitive to storms in general. When frightened they actually tend to get quieter (it’s part of their instinct to hide) or make little distressed noises.

Not sure what was happening with them in 2008 with our near miss - between the wind noise and the sound of debris hitting our home my spouse and I couldn’t hear each other over the noise even though we were both shouting so if the birds were adding to all that cacophony we wouldn’t have noticed.

After the funnel got further away things did quiet down a bit, though we continued to hear debris impacts for about 15 minutes altogether as best I can guess - power was also out and it was pitch black as well as the wee hours of the morning.

Not a fun experience.

The “freight train sound”, I believe, is the sound of debris impacts.

When the funnel first forms and reaches toward the ground it will NOT be full of debris, or shedding debris, and it could be remarkably quiet.

Depending on how much debris is sucked up the funnel, and where/when it’s falling out of the sky, there may or may not be a lot of noise involved.

If you hear the “freight train” take shelter - you might have only SECONDS to do so.

But don’t rely on hearing it.

Welcome back, LSLGuy! We’ve missed you.

My area has put sirens on for severe thunderstorm warnings. They have been criticized for this, because in addition to frightening children, they have also caused people to disregard actual tornado warnings.

The “freight train” sound may be disguised, as may the tornado itself, by heavy rain.

My sister was in Iowa City when they had an EF-2 tornado in 2006; she was in a restaurant with her BFF, enjoying the heavy rainstorm, and the manager came out of the kitchen and told everyone that there was a tornado warning and it was on the ground in town and everyone had to go into the kitchen. There were probably about 20 people crammed back there, between patrons and employees, and there was a lot of debris on the ground when the later left, having enjoyed a comped meal and a free drink while they waited for the all clear. Just a block or so away, the brick wall of a church was penetrated by a 2x4, and later on, a couple of apartment buildings and a sorority house were destroyed. (The one fatality was someone who lived in a mobile home outside town.) The apartment where we lived together for a year was at the very end of the track, and had a corner of the roof clipped off. That building is in pictures #6 and #37.

Talking about animals sensing a tornado. My Beagle Betsy has such fear of foul weather. She starts whining as soon as the first drops of rain starts.
We got her a thunder shirt. As soon as I get it out she starts really protesting. She’s afraid of the thunder shirt. :cold_sweat:
Cannot win some dogs.

I can’t remember the last time I was genuinely concerned about the possibility of a tornado. But if one did happen to strike the area where I live, I just significantly upgraded my chances of weathering it. The place I moved out of last month really didn’t have any particularly wonderful places to hunker down, while my current place is a basement apartment that includes a windowless living room.

[quote=“Lord_Feldon, post:4, topic:913301”]
I glance at the text of the warning and probably do nothing if it’s the usual “radar indicated” hype (the push for increased warning time has resulted in so many false alarms that the mere issuance of a warning is a nearly useless piece of information).[/quote] There’s a 99% chance it’s a false alarm. Why take a chance? If they did not issue the warning until the tornado touched the ground, just imagine that the tornado touched down at your house.

@LSLGuy: Thanks for the write-up! I agree, preparing ahead of time is wise.

@HMS_Irruncible: We often get flood warnings too, which I don’t pay attention to, as well as Tornado watch warnings. When the outdoor siren goes off, it has my attention.

A few years ago the Illinois town of Fairdale was flattened by a tornado. It was very close to me.

@asahi: I get that. Going to bed with the thought of a tornado hitting down in the middle of the night is harrowing.